15 April 2014

...I see vividly
that I depend on your being down for my being up. I would never be
able to know that I belong to the in-group of "nice" or "saved" people
without the assistance of an out-group of "nasty" or "damned" people.
How can any in-group maintain its collective ego without relishing dinnertable discussions about the ghastly conduct of outsiders? The very identity of racist Southerners depends upon contrasting themselves with those dirty black "nigras." But, conversely, the out-groups feel that they are really and truly "in," and nourish their collective ego with relishingly indignant conversation about squares, Ofays, Wasps, Philistines, and the blasted bourgeoisie. [...]

What, for example, is more quarrelsome—in practical politics—than the project for a truly classless and democratic society?

- Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo against Knowing Who You Really Are

11 April 2014

[Giorgio] Agamben claims that, by disassociating themselves from all markers of
identity, the occupiers of Tiananmen became “whatever singularities”.
These whatever singularities remain precisely what they are, regardless
of the qualities they happen to possess in any given moment. According
to Agamben, in presenting themselves in this way, the occupiers
necessarily ran aground on the representational logic of the state: the
state sought to fix the occupiers into a specific identity, which could
then be included or excluded as such. Thus, Agamben concludes: “wherever
these singularities peacefully demonstrate their being-in-common, there
will be a Tiananmen, and, sooner or later, the tanks will appear”.

...the unfolding of the general law of capital accumulation undermines
stable identity formations in all segments of the labour market. More
and more people are falling into the surplus population; anyone can,
potentially. Increasingly, the stable-unstable distinction is the one
that regulates all the other distinctions within the working class. That
leads to a widespread sense that all identities are fundamentally inessential...

Apart from the serious ground-level business of helping build workers'
resistance to attacks on capital, for real radicals of the new
millenium, our overriding strategy must be: DESTROY ALL IDENTITIES.
Actually existing personal and social identities do nothing but ensure
that you will stay in your box forever. And that includes the identity
of "revolutionary" or "magus" or whatever.

By happily accepting a description of themselves as "THE HIVE"
(or "hivemind"), the massed ranks of Anonymous show that capitalist
normality's privileging of individuality as the highest good is a trap. ... I always wondered why my sympathies were always with the bad guys in those cartoons. They hate us because we don't need to be individuals.